Rodney Crowell

Houston to Nashville

Rodney Crowell was born on August 7, 1950 in Houston and grew up in Jacinto City, Texas. He started on drums at eleven in his father's band and played garage rock in Houston as a teenager. In August 1972 he moved to Nashville, where Jerry Reed discovered him, in his own telling in a 2021 Holler interview, after he came under false pretences and lived in my automobile for four months; Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt took him under their wing. He joined Emmylou Harris's Hot Band in January 1975 and played guitar there for about three years, calling it the paradigm shift in my development.

He signed with Warner Bros. in 1978 and made Ain't Living Long Like This, then But What Will the Neighbors Think (1980) and Rodney Crowell (1981), and Street Language (1986) with Booker T. Jones. Diamonds and Dirt (1988) produced five consecutive number one country singles, and he won a Grammy for best country song in 1990 for "After All This Time". Later records include The Houston Kid (2001), Fate's Right Hand (2003) and The Outsider (2005), which critics and Crowell call his finest solo work, KIN (2012, with Mary Karr), Old Yellow Moon with Emmylou Harris (2013, the 2014 Grammy for best Americana album), Tarpaper Sky (2014) and Triage (2021). He wrote the memoir Chinaberry Sidewalks (2011), was music director for the Hank Williams film I Saw the Light (2015), and joined the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. Others who have recorded his songs include Waylon Jennings, the Oak Ridge Boys, Keith Urban, Tim McGraw, Johnny Cash, Rosanne Cash, Bob Seger and Crystal Gayle.

Ain't Living Long Like This

Ain't Living Long Like This was released in August 1978 on Warner Bros., 38:50, with Brian Ahern credited as producer. It did not chart. A large cast played on it, among them Hal Blaine, James Burton, Ry Cooder, Dr. John, Emmylou Harris, Albert Lee, Willie Nelson, Nicolette Larson, Ricky Skaggs, Byron Berline, Jim Keltner and Emory Gordy Jr. The nine songs are "Elvira", "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I", "Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight", "Voila, An American Dream", "I Ain't Living Long Like This", "Baby, Better Start Turnin' 'Em Down", "Song for the Life", "I Thought I Heard You Callin' My Name" and "California Earthquake". AllMusic's Brett Hartenbach gave it five stars. The Oak Ridge Boys took "Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight" to number one on the country chart in 1979 and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band took "Voila, An American Dream" to 13 on the Hot 100.